Hormones
by XxRandomHeartxX
Summary: Hormones ruin everything. Particularly when the Quidditch captain you used to hate comes out with no shirt on and his hair all messed up and wet, your brain shuts down, and he catches you looking. Not fun. Oneshot.


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Hormones

**Disclaimer:** Blah. Not mine.

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Hormones ruin everything.

Really, they do.

Think about it. How fun is it when you're ten years old and all you have to worry about is getting 'cooties' from the boy next to you. Or when it was still ok to hold hands with a boy without anyone suspecting anything is going on between the two of you. You don't get sweaty palms. You certainly don't _think _about what that hand holding may evolve into. It's all just so innocent. Then you hit puberty, and along with it come the hormones. They make everything much, much worse.

Especially when the boys come out for Quidditch training. Shirtless. Because it's warm up, and none of them can be bothered to put on their uniforms. And you're _still_ supposed to sit on the bleachers and pretend that you're eyes are not following all those half-naked boys, and are actually on the game. How can any heterosexual female girl concentrate on a Quidditch game when they're bombarded with _that_ kind of imagery?

How is that even possible? You _can't_ sit there calmly. Putting it simply, you're trapped. To stare or not to stare, that is the question.

I stared.

Yeah, yeah. So I stared. Big deal. The problem is that you can't let them _catch_ you staring. I mean, if they do, then they put on those stupid smirks of theirs. The ones that say yeah-I-know-I-have-a-hot-body-and-I-know-you-know-it-too. Those smirks infuriate me to no end.

Yet, I still stare.

I can't help it. Hormones are destroying my life. Seriously. One day I was perfectly fine. I didn't feel the need to glance up at every good-looking boy that walked past shirtless. Then all of a sudden it becomes some kind of compulsion. You _want_ to see them come out with their chests all sweaty from playing Quidditch. You want to see their perfectly muscled bodies. You want-

Yep, I'm stopping right there. I think I've made my point fairly clear by now.

Any teenage girl will know what I'm talking about, even if they don't want to admit it.

Particularly when the Quidditch captain you used to hate comes out with no shirt on and his hair all messed up and wet.

When you're in that predicament, I'm happy to inform you, your brain shuts down. Completely and utterly shuts down. To the point where no thoughts enter or exit your brain except that perfect image of that Quidditch captain's flawlessly sculptured upper-half.

Well, at least until he turns to see you looking. Then your brain goes into panic mode, and you have to look everywhere _but_ his body, while turning as red as your hair. Not fun, I tell you.

So you scatter off, embarrassed, while your best friend (who also indulges in the art of watching the male specimen) tries to drag you back, and as much as you _do _want to keep watching, embarrassment wins over and you leave, your best friend tagging alongside you, grumbling.

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"James Potter grew up well, didn't he?" Alice asked after the grumbling was over and we were back in the comfort and safety of the Gryffindor common room. No more shirtless boys in the room to interrupt my thoughts.

My head snapped up at his name. I wasn't sure if I was supposed to hate him, or give in to my insane teenage desires and fall madly in lust with him like every other girl in school. I was leaning more towards the latter.

"I remember," Alice droned on, staring into space, "When he was that skinny little eleven-year-old kid who I could beat up no problem. Now, he'd probably be much more of a challenge. Although I certainly wouldn't mind giving it a try. Just so I could touch that absolutely stunning, chiselled-"

"Don't you have a boyfriend?" I interrupted her very, very much unneeded commentary on James Potter's physique.

"It doesn't mean I can't admire the male specimen."

We'd taken to calling what we were doing as admiring the 'male specimen'. Our excuse was that it was an artform, and we'd concluded that it was extremely educational. As had three-quarters of the female population at Hogwarts.

The other quarter were out there doing something about it already. Sadly, we were just the admirers.

"Plus it's not like I haven't caught Frank admiring the _female_ specimen. I figure, as long as he does it, I shall too."

I shook my head at her, smiling. Alice and her boyfriend, Frank, had been together since the beginning of first year. They were like the resident old married couple. Always fighting about the most trivial things, but getting over it a minute later, thankfully they weren't much into public displays of affection, because as cute as they are, there's already enough of that going on in the hormonally charged castle of Hogwarts.

"You have to admit, though. James Potter really does have a good body. Anybody with _eyes_ can see that."

"Yes, yes. I know he has one. But he knows it too, which is what I hate about it. He _knows _he has a good body and he knows others know it too, which is why he always shows it off."

"And that's a bad thing because…?"

"_Because_ he thinks that it will make every single girl he comes across fall head over heels in love with him too, so he's allowed to prance around half-naked."

"You're too tough on the boy. I know you still hold that grudge against him and everything, but he's not that bad anymore. And anyway, whatever happened to forgiving and forgetting?"

"I'll forgive James Potter the day I grow another head."

"Remind me never to get into a fight with you. What's with red-heads and their tempers?"

"If you think _I_ have a temper, you should meet my mother." I yawned and picked up the scarf I had flung on the floor on the way in. "I'm dead tired. I'm going back to the head dorms. You can sit with Frank. I'm not really that hungry anyway."

I got up and with a last goodbye to Alice headed out the portrait hole, thoughts of James Potter _not_ occupying my head.

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Arriving in the head dormitory, I sank onto the comfy couch directly in front of the fire. I didn't know why I was so tired; the only thing I'd done that was the least bit strenuous was walking to and from the Quidditch pitch.

I lay my head on one of the pillows, and was just about to drift off to sleep, when I realised I had company. I heard the scratching of a quill coming from somewhere in the room.

I sat up groggily. I knew who it was. Of course, I knew who it was. There was only one other person it could have been.

James Potter.

He didn't even seem to have noticed that I was on the couch. How long had he been there? How long had I been lying on this couch for? I shifted into a sitting position, slouching slightly so he wouldn't see the top of my head. I peeked at him from the corner of my eye. He hadn't looked up.

Quietly as I could, I tiptoed to my door, frantically praying that he wouldn't see me. I had no intention of seeing him, especially after what had happened at the Quidditch pitch earlier.

Unfortunately, things didn't go as smoothly as I'd planned. I'd forgotten that my door creaks. Loudly. And of course, that James Potter, on top of everything else, has supersonic hearing.

I hadn't even taken a step into my room before my ears were greeted with the sound of his stupid, deep, manly sounding voice.

"Hi Lily." Damn it.

Stiffly, I turned my body around so I was facing him. "James."

It wasn't that I hated him. I wasn't quite that juvenile. It was just that I couldn't _forget _about all those times he'd asked me out. How he relentlessly annoyed me during my first few years of Hogwarts. I could move on, but that part of me would always stay the same. I tend to hold on to my grudges. That's the stubborness in me, I guess.

"Saw you out at the Quidditch pitch today."

It would have been about this point when I glared at him, but there was nothing in his voice that indicated any malicious intent. Maybe he was just genuinely attempting to make conversation with me. And maybe he'd forgotten about the whole staring incident, because how I wished he hadn't caught me. Talk about embarrassing.

"Yeah," I said, waving my hand around vaguely. "You guys are looking good."

James raised an eyebrow, one side of his lips lifted into a little smile, and it took me a second to realise what I'd said. Oh god.

"I mean," I blushed, furiously. "The team. The...uh...team seems to have, erm, improved a lot."

He nodded, and I just tried not to die of embarrassment. I was utterly incapable of speech today apparently, judging from my flustered response. I was _so_ ready for him to fire back with a witty comeback that would undoubtedly make me blush even more, but nothing came. He just continued sitting by the desk, writing something on a piece of parchment, engrossed wholeheartedly on his current activity, and not on me.

I was just about to creep away, go into the safe haven of my room and never think about this entire day ever again, when I heard a noise. Something breaking from where James was sitting. I spun myself in his direction to see what had happened. His ink bottle was lying in broken glass shards on the floor.

"Shit." He muttered, lowering himself to the floor in an attempt to clean up some of the shards.

I walked over to where he was to help him. The floor was a mess, the ink had soaked through the carpet, and the glass was littered all over the floor in tiny pieces. I crouched down beside him, and was just about to take out my wand when I looked up to see that the ink had somehow spilt all over his shirt, and there was currently a huge ink patch on his stomach.

"Your shirt..." I said, pointing to the ink, and he looked down, sighing in annoyance.

Before I could say anything, he'd pulled it off and thrown it to the other side of the room. Now I was crouching next to a half-naked James Potter. I'd never been _this_ close to him before, let alone without his shirt. He hadn't looked at me yet, so I took the time to just watch him while he pulled his wand out and cast a spell to rid the carpet of the ink and broken glass. I had to remind myself to breathe. This was not a good time to be fawning over James Potter's body. Not when he was encroaching on my personal space and at any moment could have looked up and seen me looking.

I could still see the faint pattern of the ink, which had pressed against his skin, and I tried to ignore the butterflies that were going crazy in my stomach. Oh, why couldn't I have just walked in my room and _not_ gone through all of this.

Shaking the stupid fantasies from my head, I got up quickly, and rushed to the other side of the room where his shirt was, hoping that that would put my mind at ease a little. It didn't.

"Do you, uh, want me to clean your shirt for you?" I was so red now that he had to have noticed just how much he was affecting me.

My attempts at giving us some room, however, were to no avail, since he only walked up to me to look at his shirt. I had to hold my breath because he smelt like soap, and him smelling like soap was not doing my frantically beating heart any good. I concentrated my gaze on his ink-stained shirt. It was the only way I could get my jumbled thoughts in order. My brain was too hazy. How was it that he was making me feel so dizzy? I think I needed to sit down.

"No, don't worry about it." He said in that deep voice of his, now that he was so much closer my knees were turning into jelly. This was not a good sign.

He took the shirt from me, and I swallowed. What was I supposed to concentrate on now. There was no way I could look at him, at any part of him. Staring at the floor was the only other option for me.

"It was old anyway." He kind of muttered it under his breath, and this only made the butterflies kick into overdrive. I was going to do something horrible if I didn't get out of there fast, but it was like my mind was out of it, and I could barely move. I couldn't even talk. All I could do was stand there and _try_ not to look at him and all his half-naked glory.

The floor. I was looking at the floor. Not at him.

Ha.

"You should probably get a new shirt now." I mentally slapped myself. Don't draw attention to the fact that you can't concentrate because of his shirtless state. That's the stupidest thing you could do.

He shrugged, wringing his stained shirt in his hands. I'd never noticed what nice arms he has.

I needed to stop looking at him.

"No point," he gestured to the ink that was covering his skin. "It soaked through. I'll probably have to wash it off first." He huffed in irritation. "And I just had my shower..."

I lowered my gaze to his abdomen, which was now covered with ink. He moved a little, causing his stomach muscles to ripple, and I had to catch myself before I did anything stupid.

"Oh."

Really? That was the _best_ I could come up with? 'Oh'? Then again, it wasn't like my brain had decided to help me in any way. Normally brains tell you what's right and wrong, what you should do in a certain situation, my brain had instead frozen up on me.

"Are you sure that you don't want me to clean your shirt?" I was only saying this because I couldn't get the image of him in the shower out of my head. He needed to cover himself up right then. It was easy, I could just use a spell to sipphon all the ink of the shirt, it would be good as new, and then the shirtless problem would be solved. He could clean up the ink on his...body...himself. He didn't need to shower. He's a wizard, after all.

"It's ok..." he flashed me a smile. "It's just an old shirt. I'll just throw it away."

"But then it would be a waste of a perfectly good shirt." He gave me a questioning look, staring down at the stained shirt.

"Really, Lily, it's fine."

I took a couple of steps forward, and tried to pry the shirt out of his grip. "No. You don't need to throw it away. You don't need to have a shower. Just magic the ink off."

He was still holding onto the shirt, even though I was pulling at it. Tugging at it. Trying to get it out from under his grasp.

"Look, if it's really bothering you so much, I can just go into my room and get a new shirt."

I strained against his hold on the shirt. "But I don't _want_ you to get a new shirt. You have one here. It's fine. Just let me fix it."

Suddenly, I pulled the fabric so hard that James lost his balance and tumbled on top of me. The shirt flung out of the both of our hands, and now it was him lying on top of me, which was really the worse thing that could have happened considering that the reason I wanted to put on the damn shirt in the first place was so things like _this_ wouldn't happen. I could feel his whole body pressed against me, and this should have made me disgusted. I'm not that type of girl. I don't _want_ to have boys on top of me. God, that sounds so wrong.

But these stupid damn hormones have the power to turn any innocent thought into an X rated one, and my thoughts right then? Let's just say they were _far_ from innocent.

And here I was thinking that I was the decent, little Head Girl.

Head Girl, yes. Decent...not so much.

I didn't say anything. Couldn't. It wasn't really as sexy as you'd think, having a guy pressed up against you. Not when he's a heavy, muscled Quidditch player, anyway. And he was leaning on me, panting loudly, no, not because of our _position_. Mostly because I know that I can put up a good fight when I have to. I could feel his loud breaths washing over my face. and I tried my best to ignore the feeling.

All I had to do was push him off of me. I could. It would have been easy from there, I would just leave, pretend that this fiasco never happened, and we could go back to being the Head Boy and Head Girl that everybody knew only got along with each other because they had to. I just needed to use my hands to pry him off of me. Yeah, I would have to touch his stomach, feel his abs, pretend that they did not have any affect on me whatsoever, that _he _didn't.

But I couldn't.

And it wasn't like _he _was moving.

All I could do was lie there, trapped, locked into place, feeling incredibly uncomfortable but at the same time somewhat _content_, staring up into his hazel eyes that were so close he had to be only inches away. He has such pretty eyes. It's something that I've always known, but it never really _hit_ me until that moment just how _beautiful_ they are.

And it's in that moment that I lose myself, and I fall, knowing full well the consequences of doing so. But I don't care. I voice the first words that come into my head.

"Go out with me, Potter?"

"Gladly." He mutters, before I drag his head down to my own, his lips meeting mine with a grin.

Maybe hormones don't ruin _everything_.

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**A/N: Overheard a hilarious conversation about hormones, and this sprung forth. Think I'm a little rusty on the fluffy moments. I really need to stop reading/writing so much angst. Three cheers for sexual tension :D**


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